Monday, December 29, 2014

Took a little time and laid in some hull markings on the Spartan yesterday evening, the legion symbol and some decorative text on the upper hatch, and continuing the theme from the Vanquishers, an eldritch rune on the side doors.

At this point I think it's ready for weathering - time to break out the sponges!

Along with the rotor cannons and other spireguard-y bits in the box from Victoria Lamb a few weeks back was another fun piece of kit that can be used to turn a Taurox into a 4x4. I had no idea how tiny the taurox was, for some reason I had this vision that it was battlewagon-sized. Not even remotely, it turns out! I do think it'll be a fun little Centaur counts-as for the Geno Five-Two army I'm in the process of collecting bits for...

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Before calling it a night yesterday I pulled out Captain Besenmut, added some bits to the victim model to Wolf him up a bit and then took a whack at the greenstuff effects. If I was a smart man, I would have ordered up some armorcast battlefield effects and just used those, but noooooo. Had to do it the hard way!

I'll be the first to admit I'm no expert GS sculptor but I'm reasonably happy with how these turned out. I can't get better unless I practice, after all! Basically just did a GIS for "sculpted muzzle flash" and tried to reproduce the basic look. Added an exit splash through the rear of the jump pack and the gore spurt from the eye socket by using a pair of tweezers to sort of 'pluck' at a little blob of GS until it started looking right, then left it to cure overnight. Now all I need is a day warm enough to primer - not happening any time soon it seems, as it's predicted to be in the single digits for most of the next week!

Saturday, December 27, 2014

I hadn't been feeling the painting mojo recently (hence the flurry of building) but managed to get back in the saddle over the last couple days! With the Las Vegas Open rapidly approaching I needed to come up with a list and finish off whatever unpainted models I may need to do. Figured I'd start with a big one and attacked the Spartan!

Started off with Vallejo Dark Flesh and just went to town getting the base red on it. ...And my hands and the desk.

Next up was successive drybrushes of Red Gore and Blood Red, followed by an all-over wash of Carroburg Crimson, at which point I called it a session and let it completely dry overnight.

This morning I blocked in all of the metal parts in Gunmetal, and tidied things up a bit.

I blocked in the areas that would be bone-colored in Leather Brown, then gave the tracks a Strong Tone wash and the weapons and engines a Dark Tone wash. Had to let it sit for an hour or so for the washes to dry at this point. Lunchtime and chores await!

Once things were squared away and lunch was consumed, it was time to block in the bone color. Many thin coats were required to get any semblance of smooth coverage, the paint just wasn't behaving today. Think it's time to get a new bottle.

The lascannon coils got the Ice Blue/Guilliman Blue treatment, and then came the interminable rivet-painting session. It does add a needed bit of gold to the scheme, though! Next up will be laying on the hull markings - the side doors are going to
get some runic script similar to what I'd done on the Vanquishers, and
I'm trying to decide if I should do a bone-colored nova on the red front
top hatch, or a red nova on the bone colored armor band just in front of
the heavy bolters. Thoughts?

Friday, December 26, 2014

While I've done some painting over the holiday (pics to follow soon), I did get a wild hair to recreate a model from my previous version of the Thousand Sons, Assault Captain Besenmut:

Still got a bit of greenstuff work to do - going to do some muzzle flare and shattering armour at either end of the shots. The previous version just had one wire holding the models together so it was a little wobbly - Decided to go with two shots on this model to double up on the connection points.

Naturally the downed marine will end up being a Space Wolf, still need
to find some bits to wolf him up a bit. Overall I'm pretty happy with
the posing thus far!

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Couple little packages in the mail when I got home from work today, the missing leg piece for the Reaver (pics of that to come), and the targeters for the Shadowsword. As I didn't have much hobby time this evening, I settled on clipping out and gluing on those rather than dive into the major construction project that the Reaver will undoubtedly be!

Building out the targeters took all of ten minutes, not super exciting but good to get a little bit of hobby time in. They could stand to be just a little bigger perhaps, but overall I'm quite happy with how they turned out!

They're predicting another 50F day tomorrow which is on the bottom end of what I consider viable primering temperature, fingers crossed as they're saying it's going to be a winter wonderland for the week following Christmas - hope to get the builds from the last few posts primered so I'll have some stuff to paint over the holiday break while it's chilly!

Monday, December 22, 2014

With the holidays upon us the work year draws to a close and I actually am getting a few much-needed days off starting Wednesday. Much needed after getting emergency panic texts at 4am two days in a row, that's for certain - Ugh. On the up side, after work today while picking up some last minute gifts I did manage to find a wooden disc suitable to make a base for the Reaver, score!

Dug up an old crashed Aquila Lander from the depths of the Closet of Doom and started fiddling around with potential arrangements, definitely want to get a walking pose out of it - Still awaiting the missing thigh piece before I can really nail down the final leg positioning, but it's on the way and I hope to have it in hand by the end of the week (holiday shipping mayhem permitting). Been slowly getting all the parts cleaned up in preparation for assembly, and scheming on how best to allow for weapon swaps on the beast, hence the big ol' magnets! I'm finding that my earlier statement of it being surprisingly lightweight may have been a bit premature. Got the main carapace assembled and let's just say I don't think even those magnets are going to be sufficient...

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Ended up getting called in to work at an ungodly hour this morning, so while awaiting some server restarts I polished off the build on the Spartan!

I'd left off last night with the application of THE CLAMPS. Another inherited piece of kit from Dave, I'd always intended to pick up a set of my own but never got around to it. They made holding the inner hull and the track assemblies together for gluing a snap! As mentioned earlier the upper deck of the hull needed a quick bath in hot water but was wrestled into shape with minimal cursing.

Turns out at that point I was closer to the finish line than I'd anticipated! All that remained was to attach the engine/exhaust stacks and build out the quad lascannon sponsons (magnetized for easy transport and storage).

Overall I'm quite pleased with how the build turned out. I'd heard tons of horror stories about the construction, and to be fair many of the parts were quite warped due to somewhat improper storage techniques. However, with the application of some boiling water courtesy of the ol' electric kettle (and a bowl of ice water to quickly re-set the resin), everything fit together surprisingly well!

After futzing around with the Spartan, I wanted to build something a little quick and easy - I'd gotten a package from Victoria Lamb earlier in the week, so I put together the Veletaris storm squad with rotor cannons I'd been gathering bits for! Pretty happy with how they turned out. Since I had a couple leftover sergeants from earlier lasrifle sections (finished before we found out they come in 20-man squads), all I had to worry abut were the 9 basic models. To differentiate them from the vanilla lasrifle sections a bit they all got backpacks to help bulk them out a bit (besides, they need somewhere to carry extra ammo)!

Now it's supposed to be almost 60F today (after yesterday's threatened snowfall) so I'm hoping to be able to get these primered - quite looking forward to painting them!

Saturday, December 20, 2014

With the bloody battering my Terminators took at Feast of Blades in October, it became evident that they needed a transport. I'd inherited a Spartan from Dave, so that means it's time that I joined Spartan Builders Support Anonymous! After building a few Proteusesses I had a pretty good idea of what I was in for on the tracks, so once I got everything cleaned and trimmed I gave them all a hot water treatment and dry (wet) fit them on the hull mounts to get them bent and re-formed into the appropriate shapes.

The 3-plate front piece and the top front sections were the first to get aligned and glued down.

Next the top and upper rear sections were added. All the prep work paid off here, and they fit together surprisingly nicely!

Finally the bottom two sections were attached. I ended up having to cut almost an entire link out from the bottom to get them to line up, but as this is on the bottom of the tank, it's hardly noticeable. I figured that would be the hardest part of the build, and the rest of the kit should be a snap, right?

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

As I'd mentioned earlier I may have had a mild lapse in judgement and it appears that I ended up buying a titan!

Each of those toes is a little bigger than a marine. What on earth have I gotten myself into?

Yeah, it's a Reaver. Or more accurately, a Reaper War Walker. Completely custom sculpted by Sci-Fi-Guy Modelworks (there are some fantastic sculpting pics), it's a loving homage to the old Armorcast Reaver, with some design elements akin to the updated take on the beast from Forge World, notably the head and the overall size. Having owned an old AC Reaver back in the day, I can assure you this thing is significantly bigger, but surprisingly lightweight for its size. It's no feather, but I'd expected it to be far heavier than it is. We'll see if I maintain that position once it's all assembled, I suppose!

The kit comes with three weapons, the carapace-mounted apocalypse launcher in the earlier pic, and a choice of gatling, laser or plasma arms. I ended up going in for some extra weapons, and ordered two of each of the arm weapons for flexibility in armament. The arm mounts also can be mounted on the carapace, though it doesn't appear as though it's possible to mount the apocalypse launchers on the arm mounts.

There was unfortunately an issue with shipping and the USPS absolutely botched the process, mis-directing it from Denver to Memphis and back again before it made it to me - by no means is that a slight on the seller, he was as concerned as I was as we watched it carom across the nation for no apparent reason. The gorillas in the shipping centers managed to mangle the box something fierce and it appears that somewhere along the way one of the upper legs went missing. I spoke to the caster and he assured me he'd get a replacement part out to me straight away, he's been very helpful throughout the process, and an absolute joy to deal with. Overall I couldn't be happier with the kit, and I'm really looking forward to getting it assembled! Now to figure out what to do for a base for it - I'm scheming on trying to incorporate a somewhat beat up Battlescape terrain piece I inherited, but will need to wait for the leg piece before I can really tell if it'll be large enough for the stance of the titan!

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Still trying to recapture my hobby mojo, nothing really appealed painting-wise recently so I decided to indulge in a bit more build time. This time around it's the dedicated transport for Caleb Decima, intended as a more aggressive HQ unit in one of the various lists I'm batting around for use at the Las Vegas Open coming up in February.

The Mechanicum Land Raider in the FW heresy lists is quite the interesting beast. It's got a veritable smorgasbord of options, though it's not an assault tank. Sooooo, the older variant of the Achilles supplied the central hull sans assault ramp, extra armour plates, and the twin-linked multi-melta sponsons (because how can you go wrong with that?). However, the Thunderfire cannon that comes with the kit isn't an option, so I'm going to have to build something appropriate to slot in there. I'm leaning towards a Graviton Cannon from a Rapier, but I guess we'll see how well it'll fit in place when the next package of joy arrives from across the pond!

The tank got some brass etch from the Iron Hands set, and I'm planning on adding some further cog-tooth pattern trim here and there as well. The Explorator Augury Web upgrade is represented by a Helios scanner, which is magnetized in place for transport and storage.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

The last week and a half has been pretty rough, so not a whole lot of hobby time or mojo unfortunately. I did get a package in the mail yesterday which included the alternate sponsons from Blood and Skulls Industry, and after a soak and scrub overnight I snuck in a half hour after work to get them assembled and fitted:

Still need to figure out what to do for the targeters to sit on the sponson tops though - eying
some various bits on ebay, but nothing has jumped out at me yet.
Suggestions welcome!

With the passing of my usual 40k opponent and sorting through all of his hobby stuff, I've been reassessing how much hobby stuff of my own I don't REALLY need. With my general focus on Heresy-era gaming, I've decided to part ways with the most recent rendition of the Mordian 7th regiment, along with a number of other historical treasures dredged up from the depths of the Closet of Doom. Expect to see a bunch of hopefully interesting stuff going up on eBay over the next few months as I try to thin out the shelves somewhat. It was a bit of a struggle to put the 7th up on the block, but they haven't fired a shot in anger in over 3 years, and I can't justify building a new version until the old one's gone, right? Haha!

Monday, December 1, 2014

My copy of Conquest arrived a little while ago and I've finally had a chance to sit down and give it a proper read. The Solar Auxilia list is very interesting - while not the 'generic Imperial Army' list I'd hoped it would be, it's nonetheless a very solid and thematic army. With some squinting the Spireguard will function well under its auspices for now! That said, I've been itching to jump back into the army and thought I'd treat myself to some build time since I'd finished the Ursarax recently. Something... Big.

The Shadowsword has always been my favorite superheavy, so it was a no-brainer that the army would get one eventually. The model itself is one of the numerous un-finished projects that Dave left behind and bequeathed to me - he'd planned on doing an Iron Warriors army, and this was to be the basis for Tormentor, Perturabo's personal transport/superweapon. Sadly he never got a chance to build it, but I wanted to ensure it was put to good use in some fashion!

The power turbines, treads, and engine exhausts are all from the inestimable talents of Tom McBride of Blood and Skulls Industries, and also make for a nice nod to the previous Thousand Sons Shadowsword/proto-Falchion that Tom had built for me several years back.

Was poking around on his ebay page and ran across these alternate side sponsons that he'd made when I wasn't looking. Instantly ordered and am awaiting their arrival, seems like they'll be perfect for Heresy-ing up the model a little further! I just need to come up with some good targeters to go on the top in lieu of the Lascannons and we'll be ready to go!

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who celebrate it, and hopefully a decent Thursday for everyone else! As I had the better part of the day off today I decided to jump in and paint the Ursarax, and snapped a few pics on the way through the process.

We had an unseasonably warm day a little while back and they got the base black primer, followed by a heavy drybrush of boltgun metal and a black wash.

Next up all the red panels got a Dark Flesh basecoat. I tried to be quite careful at this stage, don't want to slop red onto the metal endoskeleton where possible.

Next they got a heavy hit of Red Gore, then a blood red highlight focusing on the upper-facing surfaces. Once that was dry they got a Carroburg Crimson wash to tone it down and tie in the layers.

Next up was blocking in the power cables, the gold on the jump packs, and the base orange for the Volkite weapons.

Then more washes and highlights to darken down the blue and gold, lighten up the Volkites, and clean up the faceplates on the heads. They're starting to look like something now!

The penultimate stage sees the cog-tooth pattern applied to the shoulders, the roman numerals onto the right fists (their right shoulders where the numbers would normally go being obscured by the weapons), and the bases getting painted which always goes a long way to making the models snap into focus, as it were. If the weather holds tomorrow, I'm hoping to get the static grass on these as well as the Adsecularis from earlier and get 'em sealed!

About Me

I've been an avid follower of 40k since the original days of Rogue Trader. Back in 1988 I picked up my first copy of the rulebook and good old RTB01 - the box of plastic beaky space marines and the rest as they say is history. 20 years later I'm still playing with little army men... And enjoying every minute of it!